Answer to the Question

He was in his room. His door was shut. His windows were shut. The blinds were closed. Light filtered under the door from the hallway and through the blinds, so that he could see dim outlines in the room, but it was otherwise dark.

He lay on his bed, staring at the unmoving ceiling. He was alone. He had his wand out, not doing magic with it, just holding it in his one hand and tapping it against the other.

Hedwig's cage was empty. Still. He had sent her with a letter three days earlier. He didn't know when she'd be back. If she would. "Find someone who will," he'd told her, reading the short note he'd given her: I can't take it anymore. Make it end. Maybe he believed Hedwig could actually find someone who could change things. Maybe he didn't want her there to see him falling apart. Maybe he just didn't want her to suffer in the prison of the Dursley's house with him. He didn't know. He just knew that when he'd written it, it had felt good, and when he'd sent it on a whim, it had felt right.

But, his message had gone unanswered, and now he was alone, with Hedwig gone. Alone, and no one cared. Completely alone, for now his second family had been destroyed: Sirius was dead. His surrogate father, murdered. And no one cared. No one mourned him, save Harry himself. And no one tried to comfort Harry. No, they packed him off to his "Aunt" and "Uncle" - as if they were actually family - with a speech guaranteed to rile them further. To make them hate him further. Oh, sure, maybe the Dursleys had been frightened by the Order, but fear didn't erase cruelty from them. They hated Harry. They loathed him. They delighted in his pain. Thinking about them, about the way they would cheer and toast it if he told them Sirius were dead, because it hurt him, he snarled, and threw something at the door to the hall of the house where they lived. It was his wand.

"Fuck you!" he whispered. "Fuck you all!" The Dursleys, the wizards, the Death Eaters, all of them. They had marooned him here. They had shut him out, or left him, or taken from him. They had conspired, all of them, to hurt him. To put him in this cage to be jabbed and goaded and baited. "Fuck you!"

There was an answer, of course. Dudley's music, blaring and intruding in his ears. The intolerable noise his malignant relative had discovered. An absurdity of boisterous drums, raucous guitars, and nasal screeches. Rock: old, Muggle, and foreign.

"...You pass the days waiting for someone to call and turn your world around..."

He didn't often pay attention to it, but the music caught his ear this time. It was probably the thrashing chords bracketing the lines, or it could have been the lyrics themselves, addressing him directly. Regardless, he was listening to the voice.

"You don't get something for nothing. You don't get freedom for free."

"What do I get?" he asked it, sitting up to talk back. "I get nothing, that's what I get. That's all I get. That's all anybody gives me." His words filled a gap in the singing, sounding weak and insignificant alongside the soloing guitar. The song replied.

"...What you live is your own story. In your head is the answer, let it guide you along. Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your own song."

"Is that it?" he asked it. "Do it myself? Stand up, take another swing, get back in the fray? That's what you've got to say?"

The music didn't respond. The song had ended, and with it whatever cd Dudley was listening to.

Harry just sat there. He looked at the door and his wand on the floor before it, thinking about the song. He nodded and sighed.

"Yeah," he said, and got off the bed. "That's it. That's it." He walked over to the wand and picked it up. As he straightened, he heard a familiar tap on his window: Hedwig come back.